The disposal of industrial and home waste poses one of the most challenging problems in the modern civilization. Chemical and biological pollutants spread over the whole Earth surface, and contaminate surface and ground waters; they pollute agricultural land and enter to the food chain; they have detrimental effects on the whole life, affecting biochemical pathways and ecological balance; they endanger the human health and contribute to species extinctions. The new ecological thinking and environmental awareness, aiming at sustainable development, support remediation of contaminated sites and stabilization of newly disposed waste. Of many hundred millions of tons of waste generated every year in the U.S. alone, more than 40 million tons are defined as particularly hazardous waste [http://www.epa.gov/osw/basic-hazard.htm].
Landfill is an important disposal method, including burying the waste in artificial cavities on the land surface or under it. Landfilling in developed countries is strictly regulated, particularly for hazardous waste, when the parameters of the landfill site are carefully controlled to prevent any leaching of toxic chemicals out of the site. One of ways how to stabilize dangerous materials in the landfill site is entrapping and immobilizing it within a concrete structure. Although an investment into a safe waste disposal is more cost-effective than subsequent decontamination efforts, safe landfilling may be quite costly, particularly when using commercial cements. Commercial cements, as having to comply with strict requirements for public constructions, may be relatively expensive when used for burying waste. Moreover, these cements have often to be transported along great distances from production units to the landfill sites, thus increasing environmental pollution and also the costs. There have been attempts to replace expensive cements such as Portland cement with cheaper substitutes, for example with fly ash generated as a side product during burning coal in power plants. But not all cementitious materials comply with still harsher safety requirements for burying hazardous waste under various geological and atmospheric conditions, and the demand for new cement substitutes perpetually increases, particularly in view of the escalating waste mass generated around the world. It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a new cement substitute, and a new safe and cost effective process for stabilizing waste and toxic waste.
It is also an object of the invention to utilize a cheap or useless byproduct obtained from burning a fossil fuel as a regent for stabilizing hazardous waste, thus effectively handling two wastes simultaneously.
It is another object of this invention to provide a process for stabilizing a hazardous waste for landfill.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a process for stabilizing a hazardous waste for landfill, the process being suitable and adjustable for a variety of waste materials.
Other objects and advantages of present invention will appear as description proceeds.